Burnham nudges an elbow into me. “Okay,” he says.
He starts up the stairs, moving silently, and I’m right behind him. The hall is empty, and I glance at the upward staircase before I dart across to the door. Burnham motions me through first. I edge my way out and take a quick look around the deserted square. Linus is right behind me. I glance over my shoulder for Burnham, but the black gap of the doorway is empty.
“Where’s Burnham?” I whisper.
Linus grabs my arm, pulling me out toward the stairs. “We have to go! He’s coming!”
I hesitate, anxious. Linus tugs me again, and I run with him down the right-hand staircase, but my heart is ten steps behind me, protesting all the way. At the bottom of the steps, Linus takes a hard right, hauling me with him, and we don’t stop until we’re crouched into a dark corner beside a fence.
“What about Burnham!” I say, craning my neck to see toward the keep. The stairs are still empty. “What does he think he’s doing?”
“He’s okay. He’s smart,” Linus says. “He’ll get out when he can.”
“You knew?” I say, incredulous. “You talked to him, didn’t you?”
“He said if we got in a tight spot, I should get you out of it,” he says.
I lurch upward, fully intending to go back for Burnham, but Linus yanks me down again.
“Do you want to find your parents?” he asks.
“Yes, but Ian has a gun!”
“Trust Burnham. He’s fine,” Linus says.
He is not fine. I try to imagine a fight between Ian and Burnham, and it’s a disaster.
“I mean it. Burnham can take care of himself,” Linus says. He points back toward the Main Drag. “I’m going to try and follow Berg.”
“We were going to stay together,” I remind him.
“Then do you want to come with me? Berg could be going to your parents.”
But he might not be, too. “I still want to check the places on our list,” I say.
“Then you do that,” Linus says. “Try to stay away from the lights so Ian can’t track you.”
An involuntary shiver of fear runs through me.
“You can’t try to kill Berg without me,” I say.
“I’m not going to kill anybody if I don’t have to,” Linus says. “I’m just going to see where he goes. He probably knows a way down to the vault of dreamers, right?”
Linus is right. But it feels dangerous to be separating. Anything could go wrong. “Where should we meet up again?”
“Call me,” he says.
“Your phone won’t work underground,” I say. I instinctively pat my pockets, which are now too soft and empty. “My phone! I left it up in the keep!”
“It’s here,” he says, passing it into my hand. “I’ll call you when I get back up.”
I grip the solid little shape and take a deep breath, striving to be calmer, to think. I don’t have my earphone anymore, or my hat, so rigging up the phone again for Lavinia and Dubbs to see from is out. But at least I have the phone.
“We need a backup plan,” I say. “If I can find my parents, I’ll bring them here. No, I’ll bring them to the gift shop in the Backwoods Forest, near where we came in.” It scares me to think what shape my parents could be in, and the van is back a quarter mile outside the wall. “What if they’re unconscious or something? I’ll need your help. Or Burnham’s.”
“So then you’ll call me or text me where you are,” Linus says, taking his phone out of his pocket. “The gift shop is only a backup if we can’t call each other. Okay? The first thing to do is find your parents, one way or another.”
I know what he’s saying makes sense. I guess I’m just afraid, and that’s why I’m rattled and doubting everything. He’s typing into his phone.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Texting Burnham so he knows where to meet us, just in case.”
I look back at the keep’s stairs, wishing Burnham would appear there. He doesn’t.
“He’d better be okay,” I say.
Linus glances up. He pockets his phone and pulls me near for a hug. “We’ve got this. You hear me?”
“I know,” I say, holding him tight. “Just please don’t do anything stupid. I couldn’t bear it if you got hurt.”
He smiles. “I won’t. You be careful, too.”
The next moment, he’s gone.
I take another look back toward the keep and realize I haven’t heard a gunshot. Then again, I’m not sure I would hear it through the stone walls of the keep. A soft layer of fog is collecting in the bottom of the moat now, and I frown.
Are you making me see that? I ask Arself.
No, she says. That’s real fog.
Instinctively, I lift my gaze to the dragon on the roof of the keep and discover its eyes are red again.
What’s going on? I ask.
Somebody’s playing with the special effects, Arself says.
I recall that Whistler said Ian liked to play with the special effects when he was here. I don’t know what this indicates about Burnham, but I have to hope he’s still okay.
I gather my courage and hurry past the Giant Cesspool and farther into Zombieland. More rides and derelict shops line the streets, and I stick to the shadows as much as possible. At the juice stand, I find the garbage area surrounded by a concrete wall. The metal door is locked with a chain and a rusty padlock. Because the garbage area is open to the air, it doesn’t look likely as a place to stash my parents, but I scale the wall to look inside. Old, industrial-sized dumpsters for garbage and recycling line the far side, and they look like they haven’t been opened in ages.
If someone has stuffed my parents inside the dumpsters, I don’t think I can take it. They have to be somewhere better. Berg wouldn’t have any leverage over me if he actually had them thrown away.
I drop back outside the wall, landing low on my feet, and run east through Vampyre Graveyard. Next on my list is the Lost and Found, so I aim toward the front of the park where the Lost and Found is located. Please be there, I think as I run. Always looking for the darkest path, I pass the End of Daze spiral tower and wind through another set of shops and freestanding kiosks. Then I spot the East Depot of the train and sneak past a long row of outdoor lockers. I must be getting close to the main entrance. Debris clots the grid of a storm drain where I leap across.
A sudden, deeper darkness makes me pause and look up. A silver-edged cloud has moved over the face of the moon, casting a shadow over Grisly. I listen to the motionless air, wary for a sound of anyone chasing me, but all I can hear is the far-off fading of a plane. Rounding the next corner, I find the main entrance with the turnstiles, and beyond them, the statue of the Grim Reaper. Lavinia watching through her camera there should be able to see me if I move into some light.
I scan the nearest row of buildings for the Lost and Found and find it attached to the security office. It’s a small building, clearly marked, with a large plate-glass window. I pull out my phone and quickly give Lavinia a call.
“Hey,” I say. “We’re all separated. Burnham’s in the keep and Linus went to find Berg. I’m at the Lost and Found.”